// A Derideal spin-off story

// Originally posted on telegra.ph on 23rd, January, 2020 , of course during quaratine

// https://telegra.ph/A-normal-day-for-a-random-person--Consortium-City-01-23

You, a Consortium citizen, live in a close room modified illegally, barely large enough to contain a small hard bed, a little table being cut all over, and a dirty chair. The window is shut, and barred with rusty iron. Toilet is shared between a dozen or so lodgers, with no basin and a water heater leaking electricity. The only advantage here is gigabyte network access. A few of your neighbours spend all day long in the shed tiny bed, browsing Twitter, TikTok and so on. Piling up in the house are Coke bottles, plastic take-out boxes and instant noodle barrels. Occasionally in the midnight some of them would go out to places nobody knows.

Everyday, before your normal commuting, you have to go across a biometric gate, stared by Survival Function employees having a poker face. No fewer than 10 security cameras along the roads to bus station read your personal information like height, weight, age, id number instantly. Soon, the bus has arrived. You are packed in like sardines, then pay fare using QR code or NFC in a flurry.

You work at a new media company, get paid with some money left after meeting basic life. Rather than "editor", "writing machine" applies to you better. Moving fingers won't stop typing till feeling dizzy. Job routine is searching, analyzing daily trends, mixing - or more precisely, concocting - stories and pushing contents beloved by the public. You don't care content of gossip news like which celebrity got divorced. Through accurate delivering, what you compile is what they are willing to see. Works would go through automatic inspection for sensitive keywords. Boss would admonish, then fire people having fewest people reading their articles. Finally, contents you write are pushed to the homepage of various platforms and apps through different channels, skimmed by those lying all day long. After a simple tap, a large number of similar, even repetitive articles pop up as if written by robots. Perhaps this is the only thing keeping them alive.

You give a glimpse of the outside world. Ominous black clouds release a sudden shower. Feeling a little hungry, a sense of upset grasps you.

You open Foodora (or whatever). Today you receive a special 50% off discount. To cheer yourself up, you order something seeming tasty from a highly ranked Chinese restaurant miles away. However, you don't know inside their kitchen, flies are flying, sewage is of awful smell. Half an hour later, you receive take-out bags from a servicing xeno in blue raincoat with water still dropping off from dishevelled fur. Though out of breath after climbing upstairs, he runs away delivering another one.

Rain is drumming wildly on the roof, burying up to ankles. Sky above is full of tumultuous, dark and ragged cumulonimbus.

Time to go home. You hate sugared beverages, hence you bought a bottled tea from convenience store. Having paper money in hand, the lovely mtf clerk in blue-and-white striped uniform frowns. There is no enough change, so you have to pay using your phone.

Security cameras, sensors on the streets, and servicing xenos wouldn't stop their work due to this. Tenants lying in their tiny rooms also won't withdraw from screens glimmering bluish light. Meanwhile, smartphones in hands have been secretly recording facial characteristics along with loud snoring, inferring physical diseases. Collected data are rapidly uploaded, including health conditions, lifestyle habits, financial activities, etc. However, for those above the cloud and behind the telescreen, the control function, all of these people are of little worth. They have almost no value to exploit.

Except this time, there is another dextra apprehended to the VOID as she tries to access network outside the Consortium City, to warn outside leaked from a BSL-4 (Highest Security Level) lab is a virus targeting at human that never dies or disappears for good; that can lie dormant for years and years in rubbish dumps and circuit boards; that bides its time in bedrooms, vans, and restaurants; and that would rouse up and send people to die, for the bane and the enlightening of men, when the day eventually comes.

/* Possibly this could explain what happened between Derideal main story and XEN */

/* Author's murmurings */

// Being a medical student, after Wuhan Pneumonia (called SARI) and SARS, I just want to say

// the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history

// Based on China's real life, except Chinese food isn't all that messy!!!!

// Partially inspired by Watch Dogs 2 - ctOS Introduction Scene and VA-11 HALL-A

// Though Ubisoft picked a nice topic, they failed to leave their comfort zone

// And I am expecting CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077